


Panacea

by hyphyp



Series: Tumblr Fics [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Bucket List, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, gratuitous kafka, petty crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphyp/pseuds/hyphyp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a mission gone wrong, Q makes a bucket list and Bond helps him cross some things off of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panacea

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from [musicfire454](http://musicfire454.tumblr.com): [[this post](http://doubleohqs.tumblr.com/post/139052057618/alrightevans-i-just-saw-a-thing-on-fb)] - fake engaged for free wedding cake samples

After the last bullets have been fired, after Q’s wound has stopped bleeding, cushioned beneath so many pounds of gauze, after the helicopter blades have whipped through the sky like a saw bisecting the world, slicing it into the before and the after – after. Q arrives back in London with his good arm raised above his forehead, squinting against the setting sun, and wonders if this is what Bond feels every time he returns from a mission. The adrenaline is drained out of him and all that’s left is plane sickness and the strange feeling that everything is both too real and incomprehensibly unreal, the shadows of shadows.

He looks out across London with the sun sinking behind it, the light catching the windows and metal and bursting open like slow, quiet flames. The whole world before him seems either blazing or deeply shadowed and obscured. Down on the street people are walking the same as they always do, businessmen and women in their sharp black coats, a colored scarf or pair of shoes here and there flashing down the concrete. Cars go by – they seem to crawl, and Q thinks how patient everyone is, how he never realized it before but they’re all so patient.

“’What is it that makes you all behave as though you were real?” he says aloud, although his own voice sounds distant and distorted. “Are you trying to make me believe I’m unreal, standing here absurdly on the green pavement? You, sky, surely it’s a long time since you’ve been real.’”

“Quoting Kafka?” Bond says, appearing at his elbow. “It must be bad.”

“’And as for you, Ringplatz,” Q says to Bond, “you have never been real.’”

Bond frowns and glances him over for wounds. He lingers on Q’s bandaged arm and then reaches forward to remove Q’s glasses and push his right eye wide open with two fingers.

“You don’t seem concussed,” he says. He reaches up and feels Q’s forehead. “Cold, but then it’s a cold evening.”

“I’m not going into shock,” Q says. “Give me back my specs.”

Bond looks skeptical but places the glasses in Q’s outstretched hand.

“Don’t let the vultures take me,” Q pleads as he puts them back on. “I’m just tired.”

“Psych’s not all that bad,” Bond says uncharacteristically. He really must be worried.

“You’ve been enough times,” Q says. “Just give me the summary.”

Tanner appears at the top of the stairs, his tie flying comically up into his face in the wind from the helicopter, prepping to take off once more. He looks around the roof and, spying them, waves his arm.

“I’ve had my injury treated,” Q says as he and Bond approach. “All I need now is a hot cup of tea and some well deserved sleep.  I’m not going down to psych.”

“Fine,” Tanner says. “They’ll be relieved. Between you and Bond half the department has gone out on early retirement. Keep each other company, at least. No reckless stunts. Watch your dosages when you’re taking sleeping pills. You know the drill.” He directs this last part at Bond. “But we’ll debrief first and then neither of you are to come in for ten days.”

“Ten days?” Q says with a sharp intake of breath, Bond tutting in irritation at his side. “You can’t be serious, Bill, Q branch –”

“Can and will survive without you,” Tanner says sternly. “This is in exchange for no psych.  Please, Q.”

Q sighs, but assents.

 

* * *

 

Bond drives Q back to his flat in silence, and Q sits half-collapsed in the passenger seat with his forehead pressed against the cold glass, his eyes closed as he listens to the loud hum of machinery and feels the car vibrating through his skull. His teeth clatter against each other.

“Is this why you have so much sex?” he asks, his voice vibrating out of him like a piece of the whole contraption so that it sounds more like, ‘Ihss thihssuhh whhyee youoo haabb ssohh mhhuhchchch sseckkkkssss?’

“I have sex because I like having sex,” Bond says. “But some people do. Doing life-affirming things is one way of coping, or so they tell me.”

Q sits up. “I told you you could give me the summary,” he says. “What do you do, then?”

“Read,” Bond says. “Novels. You wouldn’t believe how much you start to miss just sitting down with a book and reading when people are always trying to kill you.”

“And what does James Bond read?” Q wonders. “No, let me guess.” He narrows his eyes at the side of Bond’s face, considering. “Hemmingway?”

“Dumas,” Bond corrects. “I’m half way through _The Count of Monte Cristo_. It’s quite long. You should try it. I’m sure it would slow down even that overlarge brain of yours.”

“I’ve already read _The Count_ ,” Q says, leaning his head back against the window. “My favorites were the opera scenes.”  (‘Mmy ffabboritititess werre thheh opperraa ssceennness.’)

 

* * *

 

Bond invites himself up to Q’s flat and then onto his couch but Q doesn’t complain. He fusses about making tea and cooing at his cats and checking to make sure that his next door neighbor, Rosa, had looked after them like he’d asked. Then he fetches a blanket and pillow for Bond and does his nightly routine. It’s only once he’s in bed, lying on his stomach with his face in his pillow, that he realizes he’s not going to sleep tonight. His body has slowed down but his mind is still doing arcs and skips, like a stone across a lake surface, only going on and on forever. It’s not until two that he gives up, though.

He gets up as quietly as he can, not wanting to wake Bond, and pads over to the desk in his bedroom. It’s an unorganized mess of papers and notebooks and books and odds and ends that don’t belong anywhere near his desk. Q shuffles through it all, looking for a scrap of parchment he can write on, unearthing several forgotten projects along the way (and his oyster card, which he’d thought he’d lost ages ago and had already replaced). Eventually he finds a blank, if slightly crumpled, piece of graphing paper and pulls it loose. He grabs a pen from the drawer, sits down on the bed, and begins to scribble out a list.

 

* * *

 

Q shows the list to Bond the next morning.

“It was stupid,” he says as he scrapes butter across a piece of toast, “but all I could think about was how I’d never done anything that was properly bad. I kept thinking, well, if I’m going to die now, I wish I’d gone ahead and tried hacking Google regardless of its illegality. So I made a list of things I want to do.  Next time I won’t have any regrets.”

“You made a bucket list,” Bond says, picking up the sheet of paper. “’Steal something from a shop,’” he reads. “’Hop the turnstiles and ride the tube without paying. Touch something at a museum.’ A petty crime bucket list. Hacking Google’s not on here. You thought better of it, I suppose.”

“No, I did that before you woke up,” Q says. “It wasn’t that difficult. Not worth my last thoughts alive, at any rate. But that’s the point of the list.”

“Most people want to do things like climb a mountain –”

“I hate hiking.”

“– or visit New York –”

“What for?”

“ – or, I don’t know, go sky diving.”

“That’s not on the list because it’s probably how I’m going to die,” Q says matter-of-factly.

“Well,” Bond says. Then, “To each their own I suppose.”

They have tea and toast without talking, but not silently – there’s the mewling of Q’s cats and the sound of them snapping up kibble from their dishes and the crunching, crisp sounds of breakfast in each of Q and Bond’s mouths. It’s comfortable quiet. They share the newspaper, swapping sections as they finish them.

“So what will we start with?” Bond asks, stacking their plates in the kitchen sink and turning the faucet on.

“What?”

“From the list,” he says.

“You mean, do them?” Q asks.

“That is the idea,” Bond says, “behind having a list.”

“Yes, I know that,” Q says. “But I guess I thought I would do them on my own.”

Bond shrugs. “We have ten days off,” he says. “And I’m meant to look after you.”

“We’re meant to look after each other,” Q says, scowling.

Bond shrugs again.

 

* * *

 

They start with the first item, which is to steal something from a shop. They walk down to the corner store where Bond distracts the cashier by flirting with her and Q pockets a chocolate bar. It barely takes a moment and it’s not nearly as satisfying as Q thought it would be. They split the chocolate bar and cross it off the list.

Hopping the turnstiles is easy, too, and they aren’t even spotted by the security officer hovering a few yards away. They take the tube to the Natural History Museum where they wander through the exhibits for a while, looking for something to touch, but most of the really good things are behind glass or too far for Q to reach.

“It’s because they get so many children in here,” Bond reasons, as a tour group of primary school students floods noisily past. “They won’t put out anything they can’t afford to have broken.”

They hop the turnstiles again. At the National Gallery, they repeat the process, strolling through the rooms in search of one that's empty. When the coast is clear, Q presses his hand flat against a pastoral scene, his palm obscuring a flock of grazing sheep.

“There’s glass,” he says, disappointed. He lets his hand fall away. A large, smudged hand print is left in its place.

Bond snorts and Q slaps the offending hand over his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. They hurry quickly away and back out onto the street.

“What’s next?” Q asks, still smiling.

Bond pulls out the list and pauses as he reads the next item. He clears his throat and reads, “’Pretend to be engaged to someone and get free wedding cake samples.’”

“Oh,” Q says, flushing bright red. “I forgot I wrote that. I’ll do it with Moneypenny.”

“Moneypenny,” Bond repeats tonelessly.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Only, when you compare our records –”

“It’s not a mission, Bond,” Q laughs. “It’s playing pretend for free sweets.”

“I’m just saying,” Bond continues, “that between the two of us, it would be more believable if I –”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Q says. “Are you saying Moneypenny is out of my league?”

“No, only that I’m the better spy.”

“It’s not a mission,” Q repeats. “But fine, if you want to make this about your ego, you can do it.”

 

* * *

 

Back at his flat, Q feeds his cats and he and Bond have sandwiches. Once they’ve finished and the table is cleared, Q retrieves his laptop and sets about setting up ‘not for a mission just playing pretend for free sweets’ identities that are so elaborate and thorough that it rather discredits his own nonchalance.

“Don’t forget to give us a few parking tickets,” Bond says when Q starts giving them fake national insurance numbers. “Too clean a slate’s suspicious.”

Q glares and gives Bond’s cover a record for indecent exposure.

After setting up the real necessities – fake facebook pages filled with fake photos and fake facebook friends and sickening little romantic statuses everywhere as well as an appointment to do a cake tasting that evening – Q relents and they set about getting dressed as their new identities, James Nathaniel and Christopher Kittredge, soon to be Kittredge-Nathaniel. (The best lies have a little bit of truth to them.)

James and Christopher go to dinner, where they spend the evening reminiscing in extensive detail how they met – at the National Gallery, where James works as security – and where they went on their first date – on a long walk at Kew Gardens – and how they had become engaged – James had proposed to Christopher on the steps of the National Gallery, but Christopher hadn’t noticed the first time, because he was too busy helping a crying child find her mother. The crying child is James’ touch, of course.

“They won’t believe it,” Q hisses.

“Of course they will,” Bond says with a grin. “One look at you and they’ll believe that you volunteer to teach a choir of blind orphans on the weekends if we tell them you do.”

“Maybe until they ask me to sing,” Q says.

“Alright, blind and deaf orphans,” Bond amends.

After dinner, they call a cab and cross town to the cake tasting. It’s at a large, expensive bakery with an enormous store front and café. There’s an even bigger kitchen, which is where they’re led by a smiling woman dressed for a job as a stylist, not as someone who sells pastries. Waiting for them there is a severe looking man of about fifty wearing a chef’s coat buttoned to the neck. His face warms significantly as he looks up from the cake he is decorating and notices them in the doorway.

“Welcome,” the chef greets them, setting his bag of frosting aside. “I’m Oliver Norton. You must be the future Kittredge-Nathaniels.”

“Yes, I’m Christopher and this is James,” Q says, stepping forward to shake Oliver’s hand. “Thank you so much for having us.”

“It’s my pleasure, truly my pleasure to have you here,” Oliver says. “There’s nothing I love more than a wedding. I’ve had a table set for us, if you’ll follow me.”

Oliver leads them to a round table set with a crisp white linen tablecloth and place settings for three. Bond pulls out Q’s chair for him, who almost makes a sarcastic remark until he remembers they’re suppose to be deeply, disgustingly in love.

“Arianne will bring the samples,” Oliver says, sinking into his own seat. “Please, tell me about yourselves.”

Bond dives into the story of their relationship, Oliver deeply enthralled with every detail. When Bond gets to the part about Christopher and the crying child, Oliver looks like he himself might burst into tears.

“Such wonderful people!” Oliver exclaims, clasping his hands together. “Such wonderful love!”

Q smiles, but he’s starting to feel a little bit bad about the whole thing. Oliver is so obviously enamored with weddings and love in general that Q feels less like he’s telling a white lie for some fancy cakes and more like he’s involved in a terrible deception. It doesn’t help that whenever Oliver’s face returns to its neutral state, he becomes an angry looking old man again.

The woman from before, who must be Arianne, enters with a large platter covered in cake samples. Oliver directs them to help themselves and indicates a suggested order for tasting. Q takes a small square of angel food cake with a light whipped frosting and raspberries. He takes a bite and it melts in his mouth like a little piece of heaven.

“This is delicious,” he groans, going for a second bite.

“It reminds me of you, darling,” Bond says with his most charming smile. “Now I know why it has angel in its name.”

“Stop it,” Q says playfully, kicking Bond hard under the table to indicate that he is not playing.

Oliver is visibly delighted, his cheeks rosy and his eyes dancing. Q half wants to suggest the man marry James instead.

The next cake is lemon with vanilla frosting. Q, who loves sharp flavors like lemon, devours his piece, barely leaving a crumb.

“I could only eat this and be happy the rest of my life,” he declares, licking frosting off his fingers.

“But think of your poor Aunt Rachel,” Bond says. “You know she’s allergic.”

“We’ll just have to uninvite her,” Q says.

Bond and Oliver laugh loudly.  This time, Bond kicks Q under the table, causing him to jump.  He manages to cover by leaning up out of his seat to reach for the next piece of cake – plain vanilla with thick butter cream frosting and a strawberry filling. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s even more delicious than the first two.

“So tell me,” Oliver says as they pause to sip their water. “What kind of wedding did you have planned?”

“We’re having it at the National Gallery,” Bond says. “My bosses are being very generous. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves that evening.”

“And the color scheme?” Oliver asks.

“Blue and gold,” Bond answers at once, though they hadn’t discussed it. “Like our favorite painting. _The Fighting Temeraire_.”

Q’s stomach gives a jolt and he hides his expression behind his napkin.

“Is that the painting you met in front of?” Oliver asks.

“Yes,” Bond says. “He said…what was it, Chris?”

“I said it makes me feel melancholy,” Q supplies. “I asked you what you saw.”

“Right, and I said –”

“You said, ‘Excuse me,’ and tried to be off.”

Oliver chuckles and Q and Bond adopt matching forced smiles.

“You didn’t know then what he would mean to you,” Oliver says wistfully to Bond.

“No,” Bond says seriously. “I had no idea.”

They move on to the next cake – red velvet with a cream cheese frosting – but Q can hardly taste it. He takes a long drink of water and supplies Oliver with a string of praises on its flavor and texture. The last is a thick chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate shavings coating the top. It’s rich and creamy and sweet and Q feels his eyes flutter shut as he savors it, reluctant to swallow.

When he opens his eyes, he glances across at Bond, who is watching him with a fond expression. Bond reaches forward and swipes a bit of frosting off the corner of Q’s lips with his thumb, which he sticks in his mouth and sucks clean. Q feels his face flame, but no place is hotter than the patch of skin where Bond’s touch seems to linger on, invisible.

“Ah, love,” Oliver declares grandly, startling Q. “What a beautiful thing to witness.”

Q grows even hotter and empties the rest of his water glass.

The cakes finished, they thank Oliver for having them, Oliver thanks them even more profusely for coming, and Bond and Q depart with promises to call with their final decision. Out on the street outside the bakery, the night seems terribly cold and quiet in comparison with the warm little kitchen.

They walk for a while in silence before Bond finally breaks it by asking, “How do you feel?  You’ve completed four of your bucket list items.”

“Three and a half,” Q automatically corrects. “I only touched the glass at the museum.”

“Three and a half,” Bond agrees. “And?”

“I have more regrets than before, I think,” Q says after a moment’s pause to consider. “I feel bad for lying to Oliver. He was so kind. And I hope the girl at the shop doesn’t get in trouble for the missing chocolate bar. I could have paid for it easily.”

Bond huffs a laugh and reaches out to ruffle Q’s hair. Q glares at him and runs his hands through his curls, trying to flatten them back out.

“Take it from me,” Bond says, sobering a little. “You never run out of regrets, no matter how many lists you make. No one is ever finished living.”

Q looks up at the black sky, the stars dimmed to near nothingness by the lights of the city. He recalls suddenly the feeling of clarity he had the moment he’d realized he was probably going to die. It had been like a void, free of both fear and acceptance, like his heart had shut off and his brain had taken over. Here are the facts and numbers, it had said, and Q’s whole life had been crunched down into a tiny thing for his own re-consumption. He wondered if anyone’s life amounted to much when it was viewed at its real size relative to death and the universe and everything.

“So what do you do?” Q asks at last. “How do you prepare to – to die?”

“Read a good book,” Bond says. “Have a lot of sex.  Try not to think about it.”

“I think about everything,” Q says. “I never stop.”

“Yes,” Bond agrees. “It’s what you’re good at.” Bond stops walking under a street light and turns to face Q, face pensive. “I’ll give you some advice though. When you can’t stop thinking, think of one thing.  Just one good thing. Death plays funny tricks on you. It makes big things seem meaningless and small things seem enormous. All you really need is a memory of light warming your skin, someone you love close by. No words, no actions. Just your eyes meeting and the feeling, the weight of that connection. That’s all you need. It’ll prepare you for anything.”

Q nods.

They stand under the street light for a long time, neither speaking nor touching, just looking. Q memorizes the color of Bond’s eyes, the shape. He makes a balm out of it. He makes a cure-all. And the part of him that is still thinking, still whirring away, hard at work, knows that Bond is doing the same.


End file.
